


"Wanna Talk About It?

by jooliewrites



Series: Season 3 Coliver Codas [7]
Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Coda, Episode Related, Episode: s03e07 Call it Mother's Intuition, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 05:48:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8520838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jooliewrites/pseuds/jooliewrites
Summary: “Wanna talk about it?”“Not now,” Oliver answered Connor's soft question with his eyes still closed. He waited a moment, took one final breath in — savoring the glorious weight of Connor’s leg and hip pressed against his own, skin to skin — before he opened his eyes and turned his head. “Do you want to talk about it?”Realizing he’d been caught staring, Connor’s head whipped up, eyes quickly pulling away from Oliver’s profile to focus on Michaela’s ceiling. “No,” he answered but it was hesitant, clearly a lie.Oliver tightened his fingers around Connor’s. “Con,” he said, voicing lifting just a bit at the end to make it a question and a statement all in one.The other man shook his head and looked around. “We should get up. Get dressed.” He caught Oliver’s eyes and gave a weak smile. “I’m not sure how long they’ll be…”"Right."+ A 3x07 Coliver Coda





	

**Author's Note:**

> [originally posted](https://ramblesandreblogs.tumblr.com/post/152910866658/a-3x07-coliver-coda-wanna-talk-about-it-oliver)

“Wanna talk about it?”

Oliver didn’t even open his eyes at Connor’s soft question but did offer up his honest answer, “No.”

Because he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to open up the mess of it right now. The mess of Thomas and them and this latest, naked turn in their relationship. Oliver just wanted to lay here for a moment more. Just lay here with sweat cooling on his lower back and his calf brushing Connor’s. Just lay here with Connor’s taste still on his tongue and their fingers loosely linked. Oliver just wanted to lay here and be for the foreseeable future.

He didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to think. He wanted to turn and curl around Connor, wrap their bodies close and burrow together under these borrowed sheets. He wanted to sleep, drift off with Connor’s skin under his cheek and the man’s heartbeat as his lullaby.

Plus, Oliver had a feeling he really could now—sleep that is. Something had unhinged inside him before, something he hadn’t realized he was holding close had loosened and resettled in him, and Oliver knew in his gut that he could sleep tonight, long and deep and untroubled for the first time in weeks. There wouldn’t be any waking in this bed. He wouldn’t bolt up in a few hours to find himself reaching out, searching for something, someone who wasn’t there because the person Oliver sought, Connor, would be right there, sleeping long and deep beside him.

“Not now,” Oliver whispered to Connor with his eyes still closed. “I don’t want to talk about it yet.” He waited a moment, took one final breath in — savoring the glorious weight of Connor’s leg and hip pressed against his own, skin to skin — before he opened his eyes and turned his head. “Do _you_ want to talk about it?”

Realizing he’d been caught staring, Connor’s head whipped up, eyes quickly pulling away from Oliver’s profile to focus on Michaela’s ceiling. “No,” he answered but it was hesitant, clearly a lie. “We don’t have to—”

Oliver tightened his fingers around Connor’s. “Con,” he said, voicing lifting just a bit at the end to make it a question and a statement all in one.

The other man shook his head and looked around. “We should get up. Get dressed.” He caught Oliver’s eyes and gave a weak smile. “I’m not sure how long they’ll be and…”

“Right. Good idea.” Reluctantly breaking the contact between them, Oliver sat up and reached for his clothes.

They dressed in silence and, after everything was buttoned and zipped and back in place, Connor dug fresh sheets out of Michaela’s closet while Oliver stripped the bed. They remade it in silence too. Oliver was struck how surreal it felt to be doing something so utterly domestic and mundane together, falling back into their old, established routine. Them each wrapping corners of the fitted sheet around the mattress and tucking the flat sheet under, brushing a hand over it so it lay smooth, Connor settling the duvet back on while Oliver slipped on new pillow cases, and finally the both of them arranging throw pillows.

“That looks right…doesn’t it?” Connor asked, tilting his head slightly to one side.

“Yeah.” Oliver shrugged. He hadn’t really been focused on what it looked like before but… “Looks good to me.”

Chore complete, they both hesitated on either side of Michaela’s bed.

“I…I should probably—” Oliver began, gesturing towards the door.

“No,” Connor protested. “Just—we can watch something on TV. Just chill for a while. Anything you want.”

Oliver considered. “Anything?”

His ex snorted and led the way out into the living room. “Anything within reason.”

Settling on the couch, Connor picked up the remote and flipped until he found TV Land and a Golden Girls marathon. He tossed the remote back on the coffee table and sat back. “Good?” he asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.

Oliver just smiled and shook his head. “You know me so well,” he murmured with a hint of awe.

“Yeah.” Connor turned to glance at Oliver’s profile. “I do.”

They were quiet then. The silence interrupted by an occasional laugh or chuckle from one or other other. By the time the show broke for commercial, Connor had worked up the nerve to breech the silence.

“Hey Ollie?”

Oliver tilted his head to the side but didn’t look away from the screen. “Yeah.”

“What happened with Thomas?” When he felt Oliver stiffen on the couch beside him, Connor was quick to add, “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. I just—it’s just if we’re trying to be friends, friends usually—”

“I know,” Oliver said, his voice both soft as a whisper and hard as steel. “I get it.”

“Just thought, _if_ you want to talk about it…” Connor trailed off and turned back to the TV, fully expecting Oliver to ignore his attempt at offering an olive branch.

They watched two more commercials — one for cell phones and the other a political ad — before Oliver slowly began. “We had just finished dinner when I invited him back to my place for…for a ‘nightcap’.”

Connor snorted. “Really?”

Oliver whipped a throw pillow at him, which Connor clutched to this chest. “Shut up. I’m trying to be considerate of your—”

“Just tell the story Olls,” he said dismissively. This whole conversation felt strange enough without Oliver trying to censor himself.

So Oliver did just ‘tell the story.’ He left out some of the more graphic details, sparing them both the awkwardness of it all, but he made sure to keep all the important parts in place.

“So, anyway, he’s pulling away and I’m standing there, rambling on about how I’m undetectable and he doesn’t—”

The hand on his shoulder was instant. “You’re what?”

Resting his head back on the couch, Oliver turned it so he could look Connor in the eye. “I’m undetectable.”

“ _Ollie_.” Connor’s hand tightened on Oliver’s shoulder and his smile was one of joy. “You are? When?”

“Last week,” Oliver said, unable to keep the smile out of his voice, the joy of it, the relief, the pride. “Went to the clinic and…” At a loss for words, he just shrugged.

“Oliver. That’s…that’s…” Struggling with his own loss of words, Connor squeezed his ex’s shoulder again. He wanted to touch more, pull Oliver in, kiss him, celebrate with him, do everything that he wasn’t allowed to anymore. “That’s amazing.”

“Yeah. I wanted to call you after but…” He stumbled with how to end that sentence. _But we weren’t friends last week. But I wasn’t sure you’d answer the call. But I didn’t think you’d care._

With one final squeeze, Connor pulled his hand back. He hugged the throw pillow tight to his chest and prompted, “So what happened next? With Thomas?”

Oliver looked down, picking at a hangnail. “He left. Said something about how it changed his plans and…and he was gone.” He blew out a long breath. “I texted him this morning. Just…just saying I had a nice time at dinner last night and when he was ready to talk I was here…”

Connor was afraid to ask. “Has he—?”

Oliver shook his head. “Nope. Nada.” He glanced up to watch a screen play out on the TV screen and absently chuckled at the antics of Blanche and Rose then, “It’s my own fault really.”

“What is?”

“That he left,” Oliver explained. “I sprang it on him. Freaked him out.”

Connor’s snort was dismissive. “It’s not your fault he acted like an asshole.”

“Yeah but…but I should have figured out a better way—a better time to—”

“It’s not your fault,” Connor repeated, harsher this time. “His reaction is not on you. His reaction’s all him.”

Oliver sighed. “I know,” he told Connor and he really did. But knowing it was true didn’t make anything feel less like his fault. “I know it’s not on me but…” _But he still walked out on me._ “But knowing it doesn’t make it feel any less personal. Still makes me feel like I could have done something different, something better.” Oliver shifted, setting deeper in the couch. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“Oliver,” Connor was quick to say but Oliver just shook his head, eyes shiny with tears and locked on the TV. “Alright. Okay. We don’t have to. Sorry I brought it up.”

Oliver shook his head. “Don’t apologize to me.” _Not you. Not about this. Never about this._

They settled in to watch TV again and silence in the room was filled by the tinny laugh track as Blanche and Rose were joined by Sophia on screen.

“Oliver?”

“Yeah.”

“You know you can always call me,” Connor said. “Before, about the results, you said—well, you can always call me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Connor risked a glance at Oliver. “I meant what I said before. You can always come to me. Always.”

Not trusting himself to speak, Oliver reached out and covered Connor’s hand. He cleared his throat but the words still came out a little broken. “You can come to me too, Connor.”

“Always?” Connor asked, only half-joking.

Oliver squeezed Connor’s hand. “ _Always._ ”

A thud on the door and scrape of a key in the lock had Oliver pulling his hand back and Connor hugging the pillow closer to his chest.

Michaela and Asher were back. The spell that had been cast over tonight had worn out, the little protective bubbled they’d created for themselves was burst. The real world was just outside, struggling to open the door.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://ramblesandreblogs.tumblr.com)


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